for The Blues at the X-Roads

A Talisman for The Blues laid on the X-Roads cloth by Grace Forrest-Maestas of Windthread along with some porcupine quills and a stone from the Ganges that my sculptor friend Bronwyn Berman brought back from her month in India, above a black snail shell, some B&W shell fragments, a tendril, to the left is a magpie feather, some native grasses, gum nuts, above a scrap of pale blue silk & grape vine tendrils, to the right a section of a lomandra flower spike, poppy seed pods and an emu featherTalisman for The Blues by Mo 15
peacock feathers, lampworked glass bead by Kathy Dorfer, indigo dyed silk cord from Dee Mallon with tiny blue budgerigar feathers stitched in, triangular die from Dungeons & Dragons, one of Ariel P. Cat‘s collection of quail wishbones, grapevine tendril wrapped in silk steel, lapis lazuli, vintage glass & clay beads from Africa, blue beads from New Orleans via India Flint & Roz Hawker in the Bower Bird Blues workshop, this piece of blue is for Tarla Elward of Tamborine Mountain Indigo who hosted the workshop with such grace.

Bronwyn’s ‘Woven landscape” is woven out of plant dyed 5 metre long rolls of watercolour paper, she cooked the bound plant material & paper in a big old cast iron bathtub with a fire underneath. You can see photos of the process here on her instagram page

All those small pieces telling a story, past and present, ready to carry into the future . . . it’s wonderful. I often pick up small pieces from the beach . . . I shall weave some in to a small magical bundle.

I made 7 talismans & 1 amulet for the Collector’s Show at Artsite Gallery last year, here’s the link, then the indigo amulet at the Bower Bird Blues & look forward to making B&W (with a dash of red) talisman bookmarks for each of the 100 copies of The illustrated lyrics of Old Man Crow!